§1.1 Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns advertising. In particular, the present invention concerns determining particularly relevant advertisements or advertisement creatives to serve in response to a user request, such as a search query or document request for example.
§1.2 Related Art
Advertising using traditional media, such as television, radio, newspapers and magazines, is well known. Unfortunately, even when armed with demographic studies and entirely reasonable assumptions about the typical audience of various media outlets, advertisers recognize that much of their ad budget is simply wasted. Moreover, it is very difficult to identify and eliminate such waste.
Recently, advertising over more interactive media has become popular. For example, as the number of people using the Internet has exploded, advertisers have come to appreciate media and services offered over the Internet as a potentially powerful way to advertise.
Advertisers have developed several strategies in an attempt to maximize the value of such advertising. In one strategy, advertisers use popular presences or means for providing interactive media or services (referred to as “Websites” in the specification without loss of generality) as conduits to reach a large audience. Using this first approach, an advertiser may place ads on the home page of the New York Times Website, or the USA Today Website, for example. In another strategy, an advertiser may attempt to target its ads to more narrow niche audiences, thereby increasing the likelihood of a positive response by the audience. For example, an agency promoting tourism in the Costa Rican rainforest might place ads on the ecotourism-travel subdirectory of the Yahoo Website.
Regardless of the strategy, Website-based ads (also referred to as “Web ads”) are typically presented to their advertising audience in the form “banner ads” (i.e., a rectangular box that may include graphic components). When a member of the advertising audience (referred to as a “viewer” or “user” in the Specification without loss of generality) selects one of these banner ads by clicking on it, embedded hypertext links typically direct the viewer to the advertiser's Website. This process, wherein the viewer selects an ad, is commonly referred to as a “click-through” (“Click-through” is intended to cover any user selection).
Advertisers may judge the efficacy of an advertising campaign using a number of measurable or determinable user behaviors, such as click-throughs, click-through rates, conversions, conversion rates, etc. The ratio of the number of click-throughs to the number of impressions of the ad (i.e., the number of times an ad is displayed) is commonly referred to as the “click-through rate” of the ad. A “conversion” is said to occur when a user consummates a transaction related to a previously served ad. What constitutes a conversion may vary from case to case and can be determined in a variety of ways. For example, it may be the case that a conversion occurs when a user clicks on an ad, is referred to the advertiser's Web page, and consummates a purchase there before leaving that Web page. Alternatively, a conversion may be defined as a user being shown an ad, and making a purchase on the advertiser's Web page within a predetermined time (e.g., seven days). Many other definitions of what constitutes a conversion are possible. The ratio of the number of conversions to the number of impressions of the ad (i.e., the number of times an ad is displayed) is commonly referred to as the conversion rate. If a conversion is defined to be able to occur within a predetermined time since the serving of an ad, one possible definition of the conversion rate might only consider ads that have been served more than the predetermined time in the past.
Despite the initial promise of Website-based advertisement, there remain several problems with existing approaches. Although advertisers are able to reach a large audience, they are frequently dissatisfied with the return on their advertisement investment.
A popular recent trend has been to target ads to users based on some type of user request, such as the submission of a search query to a search engine. For example, the Google search engine Website allows advertisers to specify keywords for triggering the serving of an ad or a group of ads when those keywords, or some derivative thereof, are included in a search query.
In addition to the advertiser's goal of reaching a receptive audience, the hosts of Websites on which the ads are presented (referred to as “Website hosts” or “ad consumers”) have the challenge of maximizing ad revenue without impairing their users' experience. Some Website hosts have chosen to place advertising revenues over the interests of users. One such Website is “Overture.com”, which hosts a so-called “search engine” service returning advertisements masquerading as “search results” in response to user queries. The Overture.com Website permits advertisers to pay to position an ad for their Website (or a target Website) higher up on the list of purported search results. If schemes where the advertiser only pays if a user selects the ad (i.e., cost-per-click) are implemented, the advertiser lacks incentive to target their ads effectively, since a poorly targeted ad will not be selected and therefore will not require payment. Consequently, high cost-per-click ads show up near or at the top, but do not necessarily translate into real revenue for the ad publisher because viewers don't click on them. Furthermore, ads that users might otherwise select may be further down the list, or not on the list at all, and so the relevancy of ads is compromised.
Unfortunately, existing online advertising systems are often limited in their ability to serve relevant advertisements. Even online advertising systems that can serve generally relevant advertisements often cannot select relevant advertisements best suited for a particular user.
Accordingly, there is a need to improve the performance of online advertising. More specifically, there is a need to increase the relevancy of ads served in response to some user request, such as a search query or a document request for example, to the user that submitted the request. Doing so should increase the revenue of a Website host while simultaneously improving the experience of users.